Oksanen...blows her protagonist’s cover from the first page; but this is no spoiler. What she uncovers remains enigmatic and unprovable not only for the reader, but for Olenka herself, for whom every answer yields a new question, a new source of misgiving ... Ms. Oksanen mines living history, digging up toxic societal elements that have explosive power ... Ms. Oksanen wants her readers to feel uncertain and out of place, as adrift as her protagonist, and as complicit. She forges the links of her story with stealth and delay, slipping them into overlapping scenes in unnumbered chapters ... She postpones for as long as possible the moment when the links join to form the chain of circumstances that coils around her characters. But even then, the chain slithers, eludes the grasp ... The slow build and devious plotting of Dog Park will tantalize the Rubik’s Cube-minded, and the book offers the retrospective satisfaction of infinite replay, like a game with multiple resolutions.
... [a] superb but pitiless thriller ... Oksanen...is an unflinching storyteller with a commitment to discouraging easy and obvious sympathies; as Olenka's narration jumps back and forth in time, readers' loyalty to some characters will be tested, as will an initial revulsion to others. Dog Park charts the particular degradations that women suffer due to war, poverty and imperialism, although one source of cruelty is purely psychological[.]
Oksanen deftly interweaves the lives of Ukrainian women in the mid-2000s, a happy Finnish family in 2016, and readers in 2021 through overlaps of intentions, memories, and citizenship ... How Olenka’s plans are laid out, at times successfully and at others catastrophically, keeps the narrative going until the end. There’s not a single moment when the novel leaves readers sure of what’s happened, happening, or going to happen. At the end of almost every chapter begins a new suspense, usually marked by Olenka’s gradual revelation of an unmentioned aspect of the main narrative. These mini-plot twists—a death, a birth, or a warped relationship—turn the pages to the very end ... This suspense adds to the emotional burden readers must bear from the beginning as this likely dystopia unfolds. Through the tales of the dead, the unborn, and want-to-be mothers, Oksanen’s robust storytelling brings to the fore in this ruminative thriller the capitalization of women’s bodies, on either side of supply and demand, happening then and now—in 2006, in 2016, and 2021.
The thriller aspect sneaks up on the reader as information is tortuously eked out about Olenka’s at-first unwitting ties to a clan of ruthless oligarchs. Oksanen subtly but viscerally depicts jeopardy and romance without resorting to graphic descriptions. As suspense mounts, occasionally at the expense of coherence, we learn much about the precarious state of post-Soviet Ukraine and its chaotic economy, in which gangsterism rules, violence is celebrated, and exploitation of women is big business. A dystopian novel that seems all too real.
... bleak ... The Soviet Union’s collapse looms large over Oksanen’s intricate plot, which rivets despite leaden pacing. Fans of slow-burning suspense will find much to enjoy.
